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Case Studies

The city of Rorschach participated in a federal programme with the aim of creating attractive public spaces and strengthening the social cohesion in one neighbourhood. The creation of a neighbourhood office and a neighbourhood meeting point as well as the transformation of two streets into encounter zones proved very successful. The residents of the neighbourhood developed a sense of affiliation, ownership and solidarity.

Because of a new community initiative in Mumbai the citizens get the chance to reclaim public spaces which are occupied by cars, motorcycles, hawkers and illegal encroachments. On Sundays there are no cars allowed on one 6.5 km stretch to the north of the old centre of the city between 7 and 11am. The local people come out on the streets and claim the street with bikes, skateboards, yoga mats and footballs. Moreover the children have the opportunity to play outside and the seniors can enjoy some board games.

In 1994 Jan Gehl worked with Melbourne City Council to analyse the challenges and potential of the city centre, because Melbourne had no public squares and a low quality of social life. With the help of Public Space/Public Life surveys Gehl could measure people-oriented indicators like how and where people walk and spend time, and what else they do in public spaces at different times of the day and week. Based on Jan Gehl’s findings, Melbourne’s city agencies worked over the next decade to achieve an impressive number of urban improvements.

The Market Street connects San Francisco Bay to the hills of the city, and downtown businesses to the surrounding neighbourhoods, and is therefore ideally located. It is one of the West Coast’s most iconic streets, but hasn’t realized its full potential. Hence, the city hired Gehl Architects in 2010 to lead the urban design that will reinvigorate Market Street as San Francisco’s civic, cultural and economic centre.

The Department of Transport in New York wished to achieve a reduction of traffic, increase walking and cycling and to improve public life. But New York had a dominating car culture and in addition infrastructure and systems were out of date. Therefore, the Department of Transport needed experience, inspiration and concrete tools to transform New York in a sustainable city on a human scale. Through his projects and researches Gehl Architects from Copenhagen had the required prerequisites to help and to transform New York.

In the last years streets are more in use as a place to meet, which increases the quality of life. Public spaces are more than a place for traffic, they are also a place to meet and relax. Therefore space-saving mobility is needed.

The eastern end of Derbyshire Street in London was a dead end section of a public highway and was primarily used for parking. There were frequent minor accidents and motorists avoided to use the space.

The Rosengård housing estate in Malmö was built as part of the Swedish ‘Million Homes’ programme during the 1960s and 1970s. With 10,000 apartments and 25,000 residents, it is one of the largest housing areas in Scandinavia. But Rosengård, like many large-scale schemes, turned into a socially and economically isolated area, and it counted as one of the most deprived areas in Sweden. Furthermore, less than 1% of the vast expanses between the high-rise buildings consisted of private gardens and terraces.

In order to be a health-promoting city and to stimulate the citizens’ taste for physical activity, instead of promoting diseases through noise and air pollution, the City of Odense decided to create three new urban spaces during 2010, with the vision “to play is to live”.